Unifying Theory / Sorting hat / Voldemort and Hitler (re: Unifying Theory)

[talondg]

No: HPFGUIDX 36338

--- In HPforGrownups at y..., "elirtai" <ruben at s...> wrote:

> - About Voldemort's parallelisms with Hitler, they don't end here. 
> V hates halfbloods even though he's one himself. Hitler believed in 
> an ideal race with particular physical features, but he wouldn't 
> have qualified for it himself!

And it goes on from even there too - the pensive trials are 
suggestive of the Nurmburg war-crimes trials (and of the McCarthy 
communism hearings, just to keep things a little more morally 
ambiguous) Aurors strike me as being analogous with Isreali Nazi-
hunters. And so on and so forth.

What amazes me though is the depth that JKR has put into this 
essential core conflict. It would be straightforward enought to make 
the simple connections that Voldy == Hitler, and the Death Eaters == 
Nazis, and then retell WW2, but she's gone for more subtlely and 
depth.

For one, there exist non Death Eaters who believe in the purity of 
blood and "good breeding"  - Fudge, for one. They may not go so far 
as to espouse the idea of _actually killing_ the impure-blooded as 
the DEs do, but there does seem to be an underlying belief amongst 
many wizards that pure-bloods are somehow preferable to half-breeds.

Replace "pure-bloods" with "nobility" and "half-breeds" 
with "commoners", and you might be able to see where this is coming 
from. English nobility revolves around hereditary titles (ie, blood) 
and while the days of inhertied supreme executive power in Britain 
are long gone, a noble bloodline still has its perks. It wasn't all 
that long ago, for example, that being a Peer would garentee your son 
an officer's commission in the Royal Army/Navy - the idea being that 
children of the nobility would have been brought up to lead, and so 
would automatically make good leaders.

Now it's a hell of a journey from the English "good breeding makes 
for good people" ideal of the nobility, to the Nazi "eliminate those 
not of the Master Race" policy, but one could argue that they form 
opposite ends of the same spectrum, differing only by degree. 

Interesting too is that the Nazis formed the offical, semi-legitimate 
(at least at first) ruling party of Germany. Not all Germans were 
aware of just how rotten the core really was. A lot of Germans joined 
the Party (or worked alongside or with them) because they _were_ the 
German government, and because they appealed to such things as a 
restored sense of German pride, revenge against the injustices of the 
Treaty of Versailles, renewed economic prosparity, and the efficiant 
running of the country (making the trains run on time). Not all 
Germans, nor even all Nazis, were believers in the whole "master 
race" policy.

Compare with the Death Eaters, who while it seems they may have had a 
great deal of influence and caused a great deal of fear, they did not 
seem to wield any sort of legitimate power when they were most 
active. Where a Nazi in 1939 could proudly wear his party pin in 
public, the Death Eaters seem to have been (and remain) a secret 
society.

As such, they have more in common with the Klu Klux Klan than they do 
the Nazis - the big difference _there_ being that even at their 
height, the Klan was never very effectual, in so far that the Klan 
never had much influence on Federal politics, the way the DE's affect 
the policies of the Ministry of Magic.

Compare _this_ to the Communists, who _did_ have far-reaching 
influence on American Federal politics, but who were nowhere _near_ 
as subversive, dangerous, and evil as they were made out to be. (The 
number one reason for spying for the Soviets in the McCarthy era was 
short-term personal financial gain. Number two was a desire to not 
see the US become the world hegemon, and so spies would pass info to 
the Soviets in an attempt to keep the world playing field level. For 
a spy in this category, he was working to keep the world safe from 
the Evil Americans)

So while there are elements of the Nazis, the Klan, and McCarthy-era 
Communist hunting in the Death Eaters, they are not _directly_ 
analogous to _any_ of these groups - which I think shows remarkable 
depth.

It prevents the books from deteriorating into cheap allegory, and 
instead to help re-enforce the theme that "choices, not breeding, 
define the worth of a person". A reader gets glimpses of elements 
that happened in Real Life, which serves to buttress the validity of 
the theme, but it never degenerates into "Oh, this is just Nazis with 
wands" (at which point you know the story anyway, so why continue 
reading?)

Impressive. Doubly so in that this is ostensibly "children's" 
literature.

DG

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